Last August Joe Elliott caught me off guard. “What are your plans for Judge Owen Denny Day?” he asked. He had that smug look he gets when he makes a long crossing shot on a rooster pheasant.
The electrical impulses in my brain hiccupped a few times and then began to fire. Judge Owen Denny, I recalled, was the man credited with bringing the ring-necked pheasant to America. Joe and I had once decided, over a few bottles of Black Dog Ale, the opening day of pheasant season should be a national holiday named in honor of Judge Owen Nickerson Denny.
While serving as U.S. Consul-General in Shanghai, China, in 1881, Judge Denny shipped several crates of pheasants to Portland, Oregon. Few, if any, survived. Undeterred, the next year he sent another shipment to his brother John, who released them near the family’s Willamette Valley homestead. Judge Denny wrote to a friend, “These birds are delicious eating and very game and will furnish fine sport.”
His words were prophetic. Within ten years the long-tailed birds had spread throughout the Willamette Valley. Oregon’s first pheasant season in 1892 produced a harvest of 50,000 birds on the first day. Judge Denny, who died in 1900, lived long enough to see his experiment succeed, but he couldn’t have imagined the magnitude of the new American tradition he had spawned.
Other states soon clamored for Oregon birds to stock in their own backyards. Although pheasants had been introduced on the East Coast as early as 1733, these efforts had always failed. Now, though, the right strain of pheasant had found the right conditions, and the Chinese ringneck population exploded like a Roman candle.
In the early 1900s, many state fish and game departments established bird farms to raise and release pheasants. These stocking programs produced spectacular results. By 1944, South Dakota could boast sixteen million ringnecks, and pheasants had a foothold across much of the nation north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Last year, Judge Owen Denny Day found us parked at the south end of Alvy’s coulee an hour before dawn, sipping coffee. “Whose idea was it to get up so early?” I asked.
“It is pretty dark for hunting pheasants. Better to get here early, though, so no one horns in on our spot.”
As usual, we started hunting too soon. In Montana it’s legal to hunt upland birds a half hour before sunrise, but it’s still too dark to tell hens from roosters. We always wait until we think it’s light enough—but it never is—so we end up watching the first few birds fly away unscathed.
I steered my Brittany, Ollie, into a heavy stand of Conservation Reserve grassland bordering the east side of the coulee, while Joe took his young Brittany, Gret, through the lighter grass and snow- berry carpeting the other side. I hadn’t gone far when Ollie’s bell stopped ringing. A pheasant of unknown gender exploded from the grass at my approach and disappeared into the gloaming. Much to Ollie’s displeasure, I clipped a leash on his collar and sat down to wait for better light.
While we waited, a rooster crowed in the wheat stubble off to the east. Another answered, then another. Several pheasants flew from the wheat stubble into the coulee. Ollie strained at his leash. Suddenly the sun appeared on the eastern horizon, its first rays gilding the grass with golden light. Time to hunt.
Ollie disappeared into the tall grass ahead of me, his bell ringing a merry tune. I had debated whether to use his beeper collar or his bell. I knew the beeper would be easier to keep track of in the heavy cover, but I like the sound of the old-fashioned bell. I began to regret my decision when Ollie ranged too far ahead, his bell no longer audible. Was he on point or just out of earshot? I hastened forward, eyes peeled for any sign of him. Then I heard—or thought I heard—a muffled “ding” off to my left. I turned in that direction and a minute later spotted his motionless form.
When I stepped in front of Ollie a rooster blasted skyward, then leveled off and curled back the way we’d come. He folded when I pulled the trigger. Ollie quickly found him and danced toward me with our first pheasant of the season. On the far side of the coulee I heard Joe shoot twice, then yell “Fetch, Gret!” When he emerged from a grove of Russian olives he held Gret’s pheasant high for me to see.
An hour later we each had our limit of three birds. Back at the truck we sat on the tailgate and talked with our landowner friend, Alvy, who had driven down to see how we were doing. “I thought you’d get your birds this morning,” he said. “We had a mild winter and a good hatch this spring. I’ve been seeing lots of birds in the stubble every evening since we combined our wheat.”
In mid-November Joe and I paid a second visit to Alvy’s coulee. A northwest wind sharp enough to slice coconuts hit us when we got out of the truck. Our insulated boots crunched in three inches of fresh snow. The golden leaves of autumn were gone, replaced by the monochrome of early winter. I knew that somewhere in the bleak landscape that lay before us, battle-hardened roosters were revving their engines and getting ready to run.
We worked the first half-mile of cover without putting up a rooster. Ollie and Gret seemed birdy much of the time, but came to solid points only twice—both times on hens. Two hundred yards ahead I could see pheasants boiling out of the coulee and flying over the low hill to the west—first a few, then a dozen. A lot of them looked like roosters.
As we moved up the creek bottom we flushed a few more hens, then Ollie skidded to a point near a tangle of wild rose. Expecting another hen, I walked in nonchalantly. To my surprise, a rooster clattered up, cackling and knocking snow from the bushes. I tried not to shoot too fast, but when he got out twenty yards I downed him with a load of copper-plated No. 5 shot.
“That rooster didn’t get the memo,” Joe said. “All his buddies bailed out of here fifteen minutes ago.”
“A gift bird,” I replied, “thanks to my clean living.”
I hunt pheasants with a 12 gauge over/under choked improved cylinder and modified. I know hunters who do well with smaller gauges, but they shoot their birds over points at close range. I don’t have that much self-discipline, so I follow the advice of Nash Buckingham, who said of shotguns, “The good big one beats the good little one every time.” Mr. Nash was talking about guns for waterfowl, but his words apply just as well to late-season pheasants— big, tough birds that can absorb lead and keep flying.
I start the season with No. 6 shot but switch to No. 5 later on. I’ve used Federal Premium copper-plated loads on pheasants for more than twenty years and believe the high quality of these shells justifies the extra expense. When I hunt pheasants in areas where steel shot is required I use three-inch shells with No. 2 or 3 shot. I haven’t experimented with many loads, but last fall I killed a rooster at the far edge of shotgun range with a load of Federal Premium Black Cloud No. 2. He didn’t move when he hit the ground. If it sounds like I’m a salesman for Federal shells, I almost was. Many years ago they offered me a job in their sales department. I turned it down to pursue a career in natural resource journalism, but I’ve been using their shells ever since.
I love shotguns and have several. Hunters who limit themselves to a gun or two deny themselves one of the pleasures of an outdoor life: owning several guns to use and admire. Having said that, I think most hunters shoot their best when they stick with one gun. I do almost all my upland hunting with a Browning over/under I’ve had for thirty years. It fits me well and I’m comfortable with it—familiarity breeds good wingshooting.
A half-hour after I shot the gift bird I had reason to be glad I’d brought my 12 gauge and heavy shot. Catching the scent of the birds that had flown out of the creek bottom, Ollie made a long cast over the lip of the coulee and out into the short, sparse grass of the mature Conservation Reserve field beyond. I reluctantly followed, but I knew these birds would be running and nearly impossible to flush in shotgun range.
Working into the stiff northwest breeze, Ollie pointed briefly, then cat-walked ahead. I followed as fast as I could but I’m no match for a running rooster. Ollie shadowed the bird for a hundred yards before coming to another halt. I struggled along behind, wishing the bird would fly so I could steer Ollie back into the coulee where we might get one to sit tight. When I got closer to Ollie I stepped up the pace. As I passed him the rooster came up forty yards ahead, flying low and angling back toward the coulee, offering a crossing shot. I swung the gun well past his beak and pulled the trigger. To my surprise, he dropped like a stone.
Back at the truck an hour later Joe and I exchanged our tales of woe. Gret had pinned a rooster in heavy cattails at the edge of a frozen pond, giving Joe an easy shot. But his cold-numbed fingers couldn’t find the safety. Several others laid down a twisted trail of scent and disappeared like feathered Houdinis. Ollie had trailed another bird through the Conservation Reserve field, but that one lifted beyond gun range. These birds were typical late-season roosters: hard to find, hard to get close to, and hard to kill.
Some hunters believe that pheasants today run more than they used to—that natural selection has produced a super-race of ringnecks reluctant to take wing. I doubt it. Horace Lytle, gun dog editor for Field & Stream in the 1930s, wrote this about hunting pheasants with his Irish setter:
Smada Byrd would have to rate as one of the great pheasant dogs I have known… . Byrd pinned many a pheasant to point and made it stick tight. On others that might be running she would put on a pretty roading performance. By keeping up with her you’d be almost sure of a shot…. Her very experience with pheasants, however, led to one weakness: Let a running bird emerge from cover into barren ground, Byrd seemed to sense it was a goner anyhow so she might as well have some fun—and she’d dash ahead full steam to put it to wing with all the abandon of a puppy, showing manifest anger at the bird.
That sounds a lot like pheasant hunting in the twenty-first century. Hunters who refuse to hunt them for fear of ruining their pointing dogs are missing out on a lot of fun. Good dogs can learn to handle rooster pheasants without losing their pointing manners. On my last hunt of the 2009 season, Ollie made a long cast and disappeared over a rise. I wanted to change directions, so instead of following I called and whistled for him to no avail. By the time I started looking for him he’d been gone a good ten minutes. Eventually I saw him on point, so far away I could barely see him. It took me another five minutes to reach him. When I got there, I flushed and shot the long-tailed cockbird he had held for me the entire time. Ollie may have been frustrated many times in two months of chasing running roosters, but he certainly hadn’t lost his pointing instinct.
Unlike Judge Owen Denny’s shipment of pheasants to Oregon in 1882, Joe’s and my idea for making opening day of pheasant season a national holiday hasn’t borne fruit. But that doesn’t keep us from celebrating our own private holiday each October and proposing a toast in his honor at the end of the day.